Economic Affairs

The study explore the agribusiness opportunity and employment pattern of green Arecanut processing based on primary data created from 215 processing plants from Jalpaiguri and 100 processing plants from Cooch Behar districts of West Bengal. Both Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) and survey methods were adopted to elicit information. It revealed that most of the processing plants were run by the owners’ of the land either as sole processor or in partnership. In later case usually the educated rural youths took part in joint venture by providing land and sharing finance with well experienced working counterpart. About two-third of plants remain under single ownership indicating participation and predominance of marginal processor. About 23.26% of plants in Jalpaiguri stand on leased land providing commercial expansion of the business. The highest volume of business is mainly concentrated in February to March due to availability of raw materials and the demand of processed grade item like ‘Tipni’, ‘Sagar’ and ‘Rota’. Average annual employment generated from a optimum size plant operating average 625 qtls of green nut per season was found 914 mandays of which 28.80% were female. Among the different operations, highest mandays (34.54%) was required for sun drying followed by de-husking (16.79%) and preparation of Tipni grade (10.10%) and for establishing the said plant initial average fixed investment was 79270.00 which requires the attention to understand on scale of finance. The said agribusiness may be taken as a policy option for the generation of income and employment in particularly in group approach.